Massachusetts Institute of Technology
11.201 Gateway (Fall 2005)
Reading Tips and Study Questions: For Session 8
Case Background:
As one of the largest infrastructure development efforts ever launched, the
Narmada dam projects were conceived in the 1950s and began to be
implemented from the 1970s in the western part of India, along one of the
longest rivers in India. The project consisted of 30 major, 135 medium and
almost 3000 small dams stretching across three Indian states in the
Narmada valley. From its inception, the project ran into trouble at various
levels—most intensely from the people living in the valley, who organized an
unprecedented national and international campaign to obtain better terms for
resettlement and even stop some elements of the project. Despite this
opposition, the construction of the dams has proceeded, albeit slower than
planned, resulting in the forced displacement of thousands of tribal people
and farmers, as well as the flooding of ecologically sensitive areas. The
violence of these development projects has particularly and overwhelmingly
affected socially and economically weaker classes, especially those belonging
to India’s historically marginalized caste groups. Through this case study,
what lessons can we draw about the planning of mega projects in general,
and the role of planners in ‘Third World’ settings? What is the relationship
between planners and the intended beneficiaries and victims of the projects?
Is planning in the ‘Third World’ different, and what is the relationship
between planning and ‘development’? To evaluate the answers to these and
other questions, three frameworks—each of fundamental importance to the
evolving theory and practice of planning—are applied: planning from below
(including planning-as-social-mobilization) versus planning from above;
domestic versus international framing in planning and development (or
“planning in a global age”), and the role and limits of institutional versus
non-institutional politics in planning and development.
The Narmada case is complex and there are multiple ways in which one could
approach it for understanding. Our approach emphasizes the role of politics,
institutions and their relationship to planning large development projects of
this kind. Not all planning challenges match those of mega-development
projects of course, but the issues that arise in the project are important and
revealing about much of development planning.
Required reading:
Session 8 (October 5): Planning from Above v. Planning from Below. Lecture
by Prof. Rajagopal. Introduction to the case, “grassroots” vs. “elite” players.
Required reading:
Arundhati Roy, The Greater Common Good (1999). (Read on-line at
Page 1 of 3
http://www.flonnet.com/fl1611/16110040.htm)
Sanjeev Khagram, Dams and development: Transnational Struggles for
Water and Power
(2005), chapter 3.
Smitu Kothari, Damming the Narmada and the Politics of Development, in
Fisher, ed., Toward Sustainable Development? Struggling over India's
Narmada River (1995) at 421-444.
Balakrishnan Rajagopal, 'The Violence of Development', Washington Post,
August 8, 2001
Tips and questions
1. What is Development and what is Planning? Can we think of development
as modernity? As nationalism? As exploitation/extraction? As technocratic
antipolitics? Consider how Kothari and Roy link the critique of the project
to a broader critique of democracy and the nature of development itself.
2. Planning from above: Are mega projects compatible with democracy at
all? Should democracy be judged by outcome or process? Think about
the impact of India’s democratic system on the way the project was
conceived, planned and implemented and whether democracy led to
better outcomes, and if so, how we can tell what is better?
3. Planning from below: Is mobilization effective and if so how do we judge
when it is? If social mobilization is an important part of planning from
below (according to Friedman), whose mobilization and politics matter for
development? Did the NBA succeed in attaining its goals and if not, how
can we explain the outcomes they did achieve such as better terms of
resettlement and rehabilitation from the Gujarat government in the late
1980s and compelling the World Bank to pull put its funding, as Khagram
explains?
4. City versus Rural divide: Consider who benefits and loses in the case and
how we are to judge what benefits and losses are. Roy explicitly links big
projects like Narmada with the production of poverty in cities, especially
the growth of slums. Are you persuaded? What methods and scholarly
frameworks are needed to assess internal displacement and migration and
should planners learn how to assess such societal impacts?
5. The ethnic/racial/caste dimension: Consider the facts about who gets
displaced due to large development projects and why. More than 57% of
the displaced people due to the Sardar Sarovar dam alone, are tribal
people (India avoids the terms like ‘indigenous’ or ‘native’). If we include
the landless laborers, fisherpeople and others who are not officially
counted as ‘project affected’, the percentage of the population from the
lowest socio-economic strata of Indian society who are adversely affected
by the Narmada project may be well over 80%. Is this ethnic cleansing in
disguise as Prof. Rajagopal argues?
6. Problems of implementation: The project has suffered from several
lacunae in implementation: for instance, the problems of finding adequate
Page 2 of 3
land for resettlement, keeping communities intact, and ensuring project
goals are met including through post-project review. Indeed, in postindependence India, not even a single dam has been subjected to a
thorough post-project assessment, even by applying a benefit/cost
analysis. Is a project of this size capable of being implemented without
problems? Based on the Narmada experience (as you read it), are big
projects feasible at all, as planned interventions?
Page 3 of 3